Like Dragons But More Disappointing
by fascinationex
Summary: "It'll be an adventure," said Godric that night as dusk was falling over their camp. [Four Hogwarts founders argue over a fire.]


A while back I was talking about how I wanted the founders as a party of INTREPID ADVENTURERS before they retired ("retired") to found the school.

I don't really care for writing about any particularly grand adventures but it seemed fun to write a little about them arguing over a camp fire - and interesting, too, since, other than some very general traits from canon, all of the founders are pretty much blank slates.

* * *

"It'll be an adventure," said Godric that night as dusk was falling over their camp.

He had cleared the ground and was putting heavy rocks into place in a ring around the spot where he'd decided they'd set the fire once Helga came back with enough wood. One of the rocks was smooth and polished, and came right from Rowena's pack - soapstone, carved with a charm. The fire wouldn't burn outside the ring anywhere, unless they broke the circle.

"It'll be a _mess_ ," Salazar predicted, fumbling a tangle out of his long brown hair.

He was half a span shorter than Godric, and weighed about half as much soaking wet. Right now, he looked cold and miserable.

Salazar was often miserable - some people made that a lifestyle choice - and winter was cold in a general sense, but when Godric squinted at him he wondered if he wasn't getting sick. Again. Or maybe still. It was hard to tell, since he seemed perpetually to be on the verge of dying of something or other.

Salazar had the good fortune of forfeiting camp chores that evening anyway - he was the one who'd coaxed a bottle of marc out of a priest at the last town they'd stopped in, and, incredibly, managed to hold onto it for twelve days before sharing that information.

"It can be both an adventure and a mess," said Godric cheerily.

Salazar eyed him.

"Why are you so against it, then," sighed Godric. "You were absolutely mad to see me fight that dragon last year."

"Dragons," said Salazar frostily, "have hoards of treasure. Wyverns just have hoards of _juvenile wyverns_."

Godric reflected on this for a moment.

"I bet you weren't expecting that dragon to be hoarding linen and pottery shards," he mused.

It had turned out that 'treasure' was a fairly loose term, and the dragon hadn't interpreted it at all as Salazar had.

"You might find that funny," sniffed Salazar, and Godric thought that was a genuine _sniffle_ , perhaps, not just a disparaging interjection in his commentary. The poor blighter really was going to get sick again. "But despite what you seem to believe, our supplies aren't actually free."

Godric grunted and looked up at the sky. The clouds didn't look promising, and the darker it got the colder it felt. Better start start picking trees for runes to keep the water off them, but he wouldn't be able to do much for the chill in the air.

He got fluidly to his feet without a single protesting crack or creak in his joints. He used to say it was the exercise keeping him young and strong, but Salazar walked as far as any of them and he'd probably be dead without magic. Some wizards just had weak constitutions and bad luck.

"We can barter," he said, because he was used to this old argument. He unknotted the front of his fur cloak.

"Barter what," Salazar said flatly, and then kept going even though he was starting to rattle with how hard he was shivering. "What's the point in wyvern hunting? There's no pay, they always come in groups, and the juveniles are venomous. They're like dragons but -"

"Well, they don't breathe fire," Godric said prosaically, finally getting the cloak undone.

"-like dragons but disappointing and - and _cheap_ ," Salazar kept going, like Godric hadn't even interjected.

Godric squinted for the dim remainder of the red sunset, then headed past the stone circle to the nearest tree in the north to begin his carving. This took him, incidentally, right past where Salazar had planted himself, huddling beneath his own cloak, like an especially unhappy little mandrake root. Godric swung his heavy cloak in a whistling circle and dumped it over Salazar's shoulders - and also his plaintive, whining face, which would at least shut him up temporarily.

He made a muffled noise, which might have been a protest but may equally have been a 'thank you'. When Godric turned from the northern tree to walk to the eastern one, his long pointed nose had appeared from beneath the heavy fur cloak, but nothing else seemed likely to follow.

"They're dangerous," Salazar muttered.

" _We're_ dangerous," Godric said dismissively.

A fold of cloak shifted to reveal one dark eye. "Godric."

"I know that tone," said Helga in good cheer, peeking over the circle Godric was walking. She looked from tree to tree, then up at the sky, then to the sunset in the west, and picked her way around to come into their camping area at an entry point where Godric had not yet walked a warding line.

"Salazar thinks it's a bad idea to hunt wyverns," Godric said, with the air of a younger child tattling to his father.

"It's not a profitable idea," Helga allowed, drawing some of her greying hair from her face, "but we should still do it."

Her cheeks were red with cold or exertion, and her eyes were bright and lively. She had slung a spare cloak around several large branches and was carrying the pile over one shoulder effortlessly.

Salazar made a disgusted noise. "It's a terrible idea," he said, and made no move to emerge from his pile of fur and fabric, even as Helga started on the fire. She let the wood tumble from her cloak and shook it out where the rain of bark and dirt would disturb nobody, and then began building a little mound of sticks all braced against each other.

"They're eating all the cows and things," she said, "so somebody must kill them, and it may as well be us."

"They're not eating my cows," Salazar complained mutinously.

"I've never fought a wyvern," Godric said, finishing up in the west. He looked sideways at Salazar, who scowled fiercely at him and bundled the fur cloak more tightly around himself. Godric did not think he was getting that back tonight.

"Why," Salazar said, "would you want to."

Godric squinted at him. Why would you _not_ want to, he wondered. Had Salazar ever seen a wyvern? Heavily scaled and two legged with huge leathery wings and rows of spiked teeth and tails with huge barbs sticking out the ends? They were about half the size of a welsh green, and so Godric regarded them as sort of pleasantly single-serving sized.

He had really not been paying that much attention to Salazar's protests, except to make him feel like he was being listened to. And to learn that they came in groups. He hadn't known that.

Godric was pumped. He was going to fight the shit out of _all_ of them. It would be glorious.

And then when that was over, they'd all come back to the fire and, since wyverns were inedible except in a few specific potions, maybe they'd roast a boar or something - if any of them could catch one - and then Godric would stretch his aching muscles and clean his sword. Salazar would be cautiously happy the night of a victory (pleased, probably, that nobody had died horribly and that their thirst for excitement was slaked for another few weeks) and Rowena would be excited to have something new to work on and Helga would be replete with that righteous satisfaction of a job well...

"Because I like eating cows," Helga said placidly, interrupting Godric's daydream.

...That was a weird reason. He glanced at her and found her coaxing a tiny tongue of emerald fire to rise to meet her fingers and grow big enough to start burning her wood. It cast her face with strange and eerie shadows in the dim forest clearing.

"And I don't like raising my own," she went on. "So someone has to raise them, and that'll be a farmer, and we should stop the wyverns from eating their herds so we can eat them instead. Besides, it won't be as unprofitable as you think. The folk in this area are bound to be grateful - they'll help us stock up, you'll see."

Oh. Right. Godric supposed all that was also good. Even if it wasn't, he wouldn't have said as much to Helga. Her mace was leaning innocuously next to her pack but it was well within lunging distance.

"They're not even magical," hissed Salazar. "They won't help us stock up, they'll get the bloody pitchforks and torches."

Godric groaned. This again.

"Fish!" came Rowena's voice, just in time. Godric could have kissed her.

She was splattered with mud and barefoot, and her dark hair was coming out of its plait in unpredictable little curls.

"Fish," repeated Helga dully.

"Here, help me fix them up," she said, plopping down next to Salazar. From somewhere among their packs she'd unearthed a pail, and now inside it were six silvery fish, the longest of them the length of Godric's forearm.

"I brought the wine," Salazar said defensively.

"And I didn't make you dig the latrine trench, or come fishing, or fetch water, or -"

He grunted and his hands snuck out from beneath the fur cloak.

"Please don't get fish guts on that," sighed Godric, and after a second's contemplation, Salazar shifted more of the fur.

He pulled a tiny steel knife from somewhere and grudgingly settled in to do his share - although not more than his share, of course, because Salazar would never. There was a trick to it, to snapping the bones and cutting the heads free and sliding all the fish guts out gently from a slit along the bottom, but Godric had never picked it up, even though all of the others could do it.

"Hm, rain tonight," said Rowena, dipping her finger into their neat pile of fish guts.

"I could have told you that by looking at the sky," Helga said pleasantly.

Godric, who had in fact already warded the camp for rain _exactly_ by looking at the sky, peered at the guts. "How do you know?"

"If you can't see it," Rowena said, frowning at him. There was a smear on her forehead. He did not ask what it was.

"I can't," he admitted.

"Best try the fire instead, then," she said.

"Come on then," Helga had a sceptical look, "what else."

Rowena shrugged. "There will be ill health in the future-"

"Everybody has ill health in their future," said Salazar, which Godric thought wasn't entirely accurate.

Personally Godric was hoping to go out in another century or so, fighting a Gorgon, without ever having had a cold. But, on the other hand, he could see how it wasn't much of a coup to predict Salazar getting sick. That was like predicting sunset.

Rowena ignored him. "-And the wyvern hunt will go well."

Godric brightened.

"Perhaps," said Helga in what she probably thought was a neutral tone, "it is best not to rely solely on predictions made from fish guts, just in case."

Salazar made a disgusted noise. "How do you even know, assuming that you're not just making it up, that the prediction is for all of us? _I_ gutted the fish, it might just mean that Godric's going to get eaten and I'll get all his stuff."

"You're not getting all my stuff," Godric said pleasantly. "You're not in my will at all."

"Hmm," said Salazar, in the tone of one who has been snooping through another's private correspondence.

Godric twitched.

"The meal is being prepared for all of us," Rowena reminded them. "It's fine. Are you just going to leave the mess there, Salazar?"

He made an annoyed noise, and then, with a creak and a crack of joints, got to his feet.

"He _looks_ sick again," Helga said suspiciously once Salazar had laboriously unfolded himself and stomped resentfully off to dump out the fish heads and guts, clean the pail, and clean his bloodied hands.

Godric noticed he'd taken the wine with him. It was like he didn't trust them at all. To be fair to Salazar, Godric would absolutely have cracked it open the second his back was turned. He'd have _shared it,_ though.

Rowena was now threading sides of fish onto soaked and sharpened sticks. "I told you," she said. Then, "Do we have any hardtack?" A pause. "Godric?"

What? Oh. "Yes, I've got some. Hang on."

It was twenty minutes before Salazar came back. The fish were all done and Rowena devoured all hers in a heartbeat before inching toward his portion.

"He never eats _that_ much," Rowena said, eyeing it.

"No," Helga agreed serenely, "but he won't eat the hardtack, so-"

"By preference."

"He says it makes him sick." Helga's eyes were steely even if her voice was muffled by a full mouth. "Don't eat his fish."

"Well, I caught the fish, I-"

"We each get an equal amount," said Helga, in a voice that brooked absolutely no argument. "I assure you I didn't make this fire to send the three of you away because you failed to contribute to it. Next time someone else can go fishing, if you don't like it, or you may camp on your own, and do all for yourself."

"There's no need to be so touchy about it," muttered Rowena. Godric noticed she was still eyeing the remaining fish - three sides, speared upon a stick that leaned against one of the rocks to keep warm.

"Enough," said Helga. Her eyes drifted torward her bag and, probably not incidentally to Godric's thinking, the leather-wrapped handle of her mace.

Rowena subsided.

There was a lull of silence - eating, for Helga and Godric, and sullenly nibbling on her own hardtack for Rowena - before Salazar emerged from the shadows of the trees, boots quiet despite the low light. He returned to Godric's cloak and lowered himself gingerly back to the dirt. His face pinched like the motion hurt, but he didn't say anything.

"Did you fall into the river?" Rowena asked kindly, eyeing his damp hair.

He eyed her darkly. "I bathed. You might be more familiar with the effects if you did it more often."

"Oh... How did you heat the river?" Helga wondered. "Running water's hard."

He softened a little - a very little - as he turned to her instead. She was the eldest, and unlike Godric and Rowena, almost never attracted his grumpy ire.

"You don't heat the river. You heat the riverbed. If it's hot enough the water that passes over is hot."

"That would need," Rowena dragged one finger through the dirt, rapidly scribbling numbers upon numbers. There were spaces where she was clearly missing numbers or symbols, and then at the end she frowned at it and wiped it all away with a sweep of her hand before Godric could even begin to understand what she was doing. Magical theory wasn't really his strength anyway. "A _lot_ of magical energy. That's a lot of water. And a lot of heat. I think that's a waste."

"Good job it's not your magic then," said Salazar. The tone of his voice was a warning, which as usual Rowena seemed determined to ignore.

"Maybe that's why you keep getting sick, then. Too much bathing."

"No," said Salazar flatly. He inspected a side of fish, poked it with one long (and, yes, very clean) finger and then crammed it into his mouth.

Godric eyed him contemplatively. He did seem more lively. If nothing else, cleaning up put some colour back into his face. It might be the heat or the exertion, but it might also be the running water. Like Helga said, running water was rough on magic, which included curses.

"You're not cursed, are you?" he wondered. Helga looked up from her fish and made an interested noise in her throat.

"No, Godric. People can get sick without being cursed."

Helga cleared her throat.

Salazar rolled his eyes. "People _other_ than Hufflepuff can get sick without being cursed," he corrected. "I'm not cursed."

"I don't think he's cursed either," Rowena said. "Are you going to open that wine?"

"Who said you're getting any?" he asked, even as he put down the stick upon which his fish was threaded, extracted the bottle from a pocket - a pocket that looked much smaller than the bottle itself - and began working the cork free. "You tried to steal my dinner. I heard you."

"I'm hungry, and you never eat it all anyway." She shrugged. "Besides, I caught the fish, didn't I?"

Salazar smiled. "Right, well, it's my wine, so you can drink water."

"Water? I'm _thirsty_ , not dirty."

He looked conspicuously at her blackened, bare feet.

Rowena scowled and tucked them beneath her cloak. "What?"

A pause. The fire crackled merrily.

"Go on, then," Salazar sighed, and passed her the bottle.


End file.
